No money paid by Centre to Uttar Pradesh for farmers: Shivpal Singh Yadav

MATHURA: No money was paid by Union government to provide relief to farmers who had suffered from crop loss due to recent rains and hailstorms in Uttar Pradesh, state cabinet Minister Shivpal Singh Yadav today said.

"Not a single penny has been paid (by Centre) to the UP government in spite of its memorandum of Rs 7,500 crore for providing relief to farmers hit by natural calamity," Yadav said.

Union ministers and other officials used state helicopters and the state had to bear all expanses on their visit to natural calamity-hit districts, however, no money was paid by the Union government to provide relief to farmers who had suffered from rains and hailstorms," he told reporters on the sidelines of an event at village Ajhai here.

"Since no provision was made in the budget to provide relief to farmers, the chief minister had to arrange money from contingency fund," he said.

Yadav, the Irrigation, PWD and Cooperative Minister, said 200 cusecs of water would be released in Yamuna from Hathini Kund today.

Over the status of Yamuna, he said "agitations followed by padyatra were made for making the river pollution free, but except false assurance nothing solid has been done in this regard."

Replying to a question, Yadav termed the holy book Bhagavad Gita as "dharm nirpeksha Gita (not meant for only one sect)".

Hitting out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said "the fact is that country has got nothing from the foreign tours of the Prime Minister. The Modi government, in fact, is only working for capitalists."